The issue of comparing Room Eq/no Eq soundsystems has been studied by Sean Olive, back in 2009. Even then, when software was primitive, Room Eq was proven superior than no Eq...
....I expected that these are common knowledge here at ASR, and that we don’t need to bring them up every now and then...
...We shouldn’t be discussing these in an objectivist forum, it’s elementary knowledge.
It is my understanding that @amirm wants to reach a fairly wide audience, and that means people with no background at all in acoustics and engineering will be coming and going regularly. Therefore, we will have novices popping up in conversations about components and "audio situations" every day.
How that is handled is a very "subjective" topic. Moderators on heavily moderated sites can monitor, respond, advise, and move comments and threads, although that route is riddled with pitfalls and potential difficulties. But here at ASR, there is a large contingent or regulars that are helpful to those newbies who are not arrogant or obnoxious - but sometimes we show our frustrations those who are, and in a not-so-kindly manner
Regarding your your last comment...ideally yes, but in reality, it's not going to happen. I think we should answer simple questions from new visitors who are novices, and refer them to sources that match their technical knowledge and level of interest. If they persist in refusing to follow helpful advice and "do their homework" I think it is fair to chastise them firmly.
Generally, this forum is like other "good" audio forums in where I have joined and participated over the past 20+ years. Newbies, novices, professionals, or ego-bruised engineers and industry members - appear suddenly and with a wide range of attitudes. And our responses vary, depending on our moods and whether of not we are "having a good day." Thomas only steps in when things go a bit too far. Balancing effective moderation with an encouragement of wide-ranging, intelligent and productive conversations is difficult. (I know that from my days as moderator of three vacuum tube forums at AudioAsylum.com back in 2000-2003.)
Although this six-day old thread following the controversial review of the Emotiva RMC-1 AV Processor with its nearly 800 comments has wandered a bit, many voices were heard and I found much of it interesting. What did I learn, and what do we know at this point in this thread? (Corrections welcome - if I got it wrong, so will others with limited technical expertise!)
1. The Emotiva RMC-1 AV Processor has many interface, software and connectivity problems and requires a cold, slow, hard reboot too often to get things working. It is definitely not a plug'n'play component, although even if everything worked correctly "out of the box", many non-technical buyers would still need to utilize an experienced installer because of the complex nature of multichannel AV systems.
2. The RMC-1 was released for sale as an unfinished product with promised features still not available more than a year later.
and it cannot even match good $100 DAC/HA's with respect to basic distortion and noise specs, and barely keeps them in the inaudible range.
3. Emotiva, like Schitt, is reacting initially with retorts and excuses, but we hope that, again like Schitt, they will chill and offer some really well designed components in the future.
4. AV receivers, preamps and processors (except for the very best like Trinnov) are apparently designed under the thumb of the marketing department who seem to have much more clout than the engineering departments.
5. We are anxiously awaiting the first review that unveils a reasonably priced multi-channel AV receiver/preamp/processor that measures well.
6. And I learned a lot about the various proprietary, license-required implementations of DSP for multi-channel installations.
Overall, I really like this thread - it gives us some guidelines for evaluating future AV multichannel components after they pass through
@amirm's quite rigorous testing and measurement gauntlet.
Not sure if @peng has owned D&M product with MultEQ XT. He has done comparisons with XT32 and Dirac Live.
